Facebook most popular social media site for US job seekers

Though LinkedIn and Twitter are both growing in popularity, more job seekers turn to Facebook to find work than on any other social media site.

Though LinkedIn and Twitter are both growing in popularity, more job seekers turn to Facebook to find work than on any other social media site.

As well as being the place to go to share photos of cats, catch up with friends, discuss the day's news, interact with consumer brands and even choose a college or university, Facebook is now the social media destination for US job seekers.

Though LinkedIn is usually considered the go-to site for building up business contacts and identifying job opportunities, only 38 percent of US jobseekers surveyed by Jobvite said they used the site to help them find work, compared with 52 percent of respondents who use Facebook (up from 48 percent in the 2011 survey).

The research, published Tuesday, polled over 2,100 adults aged 18+ actively seeking employment, 1300 of whom were currently in the workfore. It reveals that 17 percent provided their Facebook profile page on a job application or during an interview and that 15 percent modified their privacy settings with work in mind. One in five claimed that a friend or contact shared news of a job offer via Facebook whereas 19 percent had a contact share news of a job via Linkedin and 11 percent via Twitter.

Twitter is gaining on both LinkedIn and Facebook as a source for finding employment with 34 percent of respondents using it to help find work and 10 percent using it to search for jobs compared with 26 percent and 7 percent respectively for 2011.

According to the survey men are more likely than women to turn to social media channels in order to find work. Seventy percent of Facebook-using job seekers, 67 percent of Twitter users and 60 percent of LinkedIn users are male. Respondents of both sexes under the age of 40 were more likely to use social media than those over 40.

LinkedIn was the only site equally popular with college graduates and non-college graduates. Only 44 percent of Twitter users and 36 percent of Facebook users who took part in the survey were graduates.